


you can wash me but you'll never get me clean

by youremyqueen



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dysfunctional Relationships, M/M, POV Second Person, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-20
Updated: 2015-01-20
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:49:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3201251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youremyqueen/pseuds/youremyqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loathing somebody doesn't stop you missing them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can wash me but you'll never get me clean

**Author's Note:**

> yes i ship this trash ship. i tried not to when i read the books, i _really_ tried not to when they cast a hottie with a body to play ramsay, and i'm still trying now, but eh. in the meantime i wrote fic. whoops.
> 
> also, i don't usually like to write in second person, but this is the only way theon's voice really works for me so there you go.

You’re missing two fingers, four teeth, and you have his name carved into the dip of your left hipbone, but his hands are off you and you’re a new man.

You still visit him in prison. You have a standing appointment once a week. Asha tells you not to go, Robb begs you, but you still can’t get off without smelling your own blood, or at least feeling enclosed, paralyzed, destroyed.

You think of ways to destroy yourself in his stead, but softly. Ramsay’s problem was always that he was too much, too hard. He tore you to smithereens from the first touch and if only he’d been gentler with his abuse, he might have kept you forever. You might be short another finger. You might still wake up terrified in the cold dead of night, but at least he’d be there to drug you back to sleep with his warm breath and his fervor and his madness.

“You look healthier,” he says, disapprovingly. He’s got a bruise yellowing the swell of his right cheek. They tell you that he picks fights, and he tells you that fights pick him. His shave is uneven. He’s smiling that fond smile, like he can and he will eat you up, skin and bone and marrow.

“I have a food diary,” you say, smarmily, because if you let it sound as pathetic as it is he’ll use it as a hole to crawl his way back inside. Even separated by glass and half a year of penance there’s still room for him. “I write down everything I eat so they know I’m not starving myself.”

“You could easily bullshit that.” He speaks lazily, as if you’re just a couple of old chums catching up over a coffee.

“But I don’t.”

Ramsay twirls the telephone wire around one finger. It’s his trigger finger. “What a good boy you’ve become.”

You shrug. “I’m not any better, really. Just better off.”

“It’s only a bandage. The disease is still there, and it’s not curable. You’ll never get me out of you because you don’t want me out.”

You smile. You smile and you’re missing two visible teeth and you’re not beautiful the way he told you you were, running his crooked fingers along the jut of your ribs, tugging at your hair, telling you stories about the end of the world, you and he dead and buried in some old cemetery together, inseparable even after rotting through. You’re not most of the things that he told you you were.

You smile and you say, “Well, I’ve got upwards of ten years to learn how to want to.”

He presses a wet kiss to the glass when you stand to go and you laugh, you can’t help it. He’s a sick fuck and you hate his guts, but he hasn’t ruined you, you haven’t let him, and you’ll be back next week to show him every little inch of improvement. You love his guts, too, his bones, his skin, his mouth, his horrible voice and his horrible laugh. You love him the way a forest loves a fire.

You’ll grow back, but never quite the same as you were, and you’ll never quite manage to want to be.


End file.
